Quentin, your panorama is gorgeous, and all the more so seeing it up on the wall writ large. I remembered your comment about doing it handheld because I have done a number of them that way, with good results with the DP2M and some other cameras. I've wondered what I should get if I go to a specialty head, and so was also interested in your comments about your setup. I'm sure with the handheld, aside from any considerations of loss of absolute stability, I'm losing some areas of the image top and bottom when it is stitched, as I'm not getting the precise registration I would get with a leveled tripod-taken series. Keep showing us your results as they are both lovely and inspiring. --Barbara

Hi Barbara, many thanks. The advantage of a pano head and tripod as you know is that it removes most of the issues with stitching at the outset. I have a tendancy to tilt a tad to the right when hooting handheld. I think I have the horizon straight but then later I realise I was just a little bit skewed But the beauty of my current DP2M / Nodal Ninja / levelling head / lightweight tripod is the whole kit and kaboodle is lightweight, easily carry-able but large format pano quality. I have used bigger pano set-ups before but I have needed to know in advance I want to shoot a panorama or I have just had to make do without a pano head with potential risk to the panorama. Usually it is the latter.

The other more subtle advantage is for the non-panorama panoramas - using the set-up for a larger file or wider but not obviously panoramic view. Why lug around a huge medium format camera etc when you have similar quality available in a smaller more compact and versatile form? Of course that has been the case for some time but the quality of the DP2M files makes it a more compelling proposition, for me at least - particularly as I am not getting any younger!

« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 04:20:18 AM by Quentin »

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Quentin Bargate, ARPS, Author, photographer entrepreneur and senior partner of Bargate Murray, Law Firm of the Year 2013

Yes. The advantage of the Merrill, one of his big points is his power and his weight. Even a D700 weight like a brick when I go out now (and I'm kinda young). For landscape he rules. But I have some problems, sometimes, with horizontal lines such as sea. Autopano do not stitch correctly some horizons (hand-held). I'm looking for a new tripod who is ultra compact. I seen it the other day but can't remember where. He is made like tent picket...

Some more photo from the toy store. Hand-held, all at 2.8 and somewhere near 1/30, 1/20... not bad for a 15 Mp non stabilized !

My camera arrived last week. I've been having difficulty with exposure consistency. In both manual and aperture priority the exposures are not consistent from one shot to the next. I get some over and some under exposed.

I suspect it has more to do with me than the camera but I'm also suspecting that something is compromised while the image is being written to the card. What steps are you all taking to minimize this issue if any?

Edit: It is user error again. Nothing is wrong with the camera. I had bracketing on in a single shot mode. Each time I clicked the shutter it went to the next sequence in the bracket. This happened even when changing settings and regardless of the time between shots. I was hoping I would soon graduate from the beginner forum but it's clearly back to summer school for me.

I always shoot raw, and never interpolate in Sigma Photo Pro. I've tried and the results were...poor. You would also be stitching larger images than necessary. Better to use a decent interpoloation program like Photozoom Pro (which I use) on the final image (post stitching) so long as you have enough memory! I dropped it down to 8 bits for the final size tweak.

This print ended up the size it did because I had intended to to print it at the max size my Epson 7900 can handle - 24" high. In the end its a perfect size for the intended position. However I could have used a different size. It has resolution to spare.

Quentin

« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 12:43:59 PM by Quentin »

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Quentin Bargate, ARPS, Author, photographer entrepreneur and senior partner of Bargate Murray, Law Firm of the Year 2013

Quentin, so here I am back with another question. I went to the Spectrumphoto site via your link, and after an introduction about the Perspex process, they say, "Please note Perspex reverse mounting is NOT available for Giclee prints." Aside from my not liking use of the term "giclee," could they be referring to dye-ink printers? Or do they just not want to take responsibility for the results with inkjet prints? What does this mean? --Barbara

Hi all, I'm new to this forum as I own a DP2M from last friday; I love very much the camera but...it seems to me that it underexpose a lot, I think one half stop to one stop; I'm confused by what I've read on forums in the matter of sharpness in SPP for exporting tiff to lightroom or PS, that is which corrections do you make in SPP before exporting the file to other developers and how much sharpness do you do after the exporting? thanks

I had my first chance to shoot on Saturday. I am still getting the hang of this camera, and one thing that I miss is the ability to steady your camera on your face using the viewfinder. I have been an SLR-only photographer since age 13, and never realized how much help that third contact point on the face gives to stabilization. DP2M is pretty unforgiving of even minimal movement. Now I am looking into some handy way to hook up the Hoodman to the camera, involving some combination of plastic from milk bottles, velcro strips, and/or elastic to create a harness for the Hoodman. If I like what I make, I may post instructions and snapshot. Re: tripod use: As for the A-S plate, I have a small "universal" plate which works - for portrait orientation, it will be necessary to flip the ball stem into the "90 degree" slot of the head.

SPP - ow! I am more convinced than ever that Lightroom is a brilliant program. SPP falls into the category of "oh well, I guess that it will do..."

Nancy: you're right about sensitivity to movement. With the best sensors, figure about 4-5x focal length for the minimum hand-holdable speed to kee full rez. Worse of course if there's a mirror or focal plane shutter involved.

I joked the other day that the DP Merrills are basically minature tech-cameras: tripod based (for both composition and stability, base-ISO, shot with self timer. For optimum results, that's not too far from the truth. Used that way, the camera is potentially a fine-art tool. Used casually, it's just a really bad point and shoot.

Anfat: you should adjust highlight, shadows, white balance and sharpness in SPP. Sharpening is an interesting question. Michael has found (ro heard) that "0" in sharpening is actually not "nill". You have to do in a negative amount to get a truly unsharpened file. Personally, I find 0 to -4 are about right. That still might add some capture sharpening, but I don't object to that. I just sharpen less in LR4 -- which you would do anyway since these files are so sharp to begin with.

Thank you so much for your helpful reply. You have peaked my interest in doing panoramas with the Sigma DP2M!

I have downloaded PTGUI and presented it with a three jpeg images shots handheld to render a panoramo. To my surprise, it couldn't do it and asked me to do something with control points. CS5 Photomerge easely did it in a few minutes. So I looked elsewhere and found Autopano Pro and it automatically assembled the three shots pano in a few seconds. So I decided to test it to its limits.

Next I mounted the camera on a tripod, shot eight raw images. All converted to double size tiff in SPP, saved to disk and then I fed the images (2.77 gig total) to Autopano Pro 3.0 Beta trial. To my utter astonishment, it assembled the panorama in about 1.5 minutes and rendered a kind of semi cylindrical image (sides higher than center) of 26211 x 13399 pixels which I then had Autopano crop to a rectangular image of 25957 x 9545 pixels. Wow, the speed and ease of execution was something unexpected.

Even though it has 8 gigs of memory, the computing power of my desktop is best described as being mid level. So I'll give PTGUI another try, but I can see that it will be fighting an uphill battle!

Again, thanks for your clear explanations and taking the time to respond to my query.